Gov. Phil Murphy announced New Jersey’s utility shut-off moratorium will lapse on July 1 with a grace period stretching until the end of the year, but the state’s evictions embargo isn’t going anywhere yet.
Under an executive order the governor plans to issue Monday, the moratorium on utility shut-offs will end at the start of the next month, but shut-offs will still be barred until 2022. The grace six-month grace period is meant to allow residents behind on their utility payments to work out payment plans with providers.
“Everyone deserves the opportunity to work with their utility provider on payment options that will ensure these vital, and in some cases life-preserving services, and that they will be maintained,” he said. “We fully expect every utility providers to work with their customers in good faith.”
A past executive order barred utility shut-offs until March 15, 2022.
The governor said the administration was weighing using a portion of the $6 billion it received from the federal government under the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill President Joe Biden signed in March to aid residents struggling to pay their utility bills.
His announcement Monday comes after Murphy signed a bill earlier this month extending the utility shut off moratorium by six months.
The future of the state’s eviction moratorium remains in limbo. The bill Murphy signed earlier this month as part of a deal to end the state’s public health emergency allows him to keep the embargo on evictions in place for months, but he could not say Monday whether he would lift the halt on evictions soon.
“No news to make on the eviction moratorium, but I hope we can come to a resolution that has elements that are similar to the utility arrearages announcement I made today,” Murphy said. In other words, it gives people a date in the future, a transition period.”
Republicans have redoubled their calls to end the moratorium since the pandemic powers bill was signed into law, and there’s a growing sense among the legislature’s Democrats that the policy has to end soon.
State Sens. Brian Stack (D-Union City) and Ron Rice (D-Newark) last month introduced a bill that would provide $750 million to rental assistance and other tenant protections while setting a discrete timeline to end the eviction moratorium.
The issue around the evictions moratorium is two-fold. The policy is meant to keep renters who lost their job amid the COVID-fueled economic downturn with a roof over their heads, but it has strained the finances of landlords who have, in some cases, gone without rent payments for months.
Federal dollars are on the table here too, Murphy said.
“It’s folks who rent but it’s also small landlords, so there’s a symmetry to the pain here,” he said. “I would also hope, as I mentioned in my remarks as it relates to the utility moratorium sunsetting, that we would be able to use federal money — American Rescue Plan money — for folks in those buckets as well.”